It's Ok To

Hey, Must Readers 👋!    

This weeks newsletter has 10 must-read stories for you to enjoy and share with friends and colleagues & this week a devil advocate on the OF / creator space.   

Subject Line Explained: Google’s manifesto it’s ok to has been across LinkedIn and got a lot of props from non-Googler’s. It’s important to note that their approach is not going to be a copy-paste for many others and why writing your own is going to be important and could save you a lot of heartaches. Well worth a read into why Google can do this but you and your business can’t 

Must Read Articles Of The Week

1. 40 Tips To Improve Work For Everyone 👏Here are 40 tips to help improve work for everyone, from improving meetings, to reducing over communication & always stating why this should not be an email - Read the full 40

2. Build The Future Of Marketing 🚀What the future of Marketing departments need to prepare for…including becoming part media company. Another little hint, work out whether you will have to be part of the consolidation, choose Co-Op and partnerships or get into the Dog Fight - Read the full article 

3. How Amazon Ruined The Name Alexa Amazon isn’t the first brand to ruin a name when naming their product lines but Amazon has appeared to have a huge negative impact on Alexa after an initial boost in 2014. Brands are going after single words, names and easy to remember words to own them, we are likely to see this ramp-up in the coming years - Read the full article

4. Inside The World’s Most Popular Airbnb’s 🏠 How one unique hut in California became the most popular Airbnb in the world. FWIW 2019-2021 were incredible times for Airbnb and is well worth listening to their stories of killing their marketing $800m spend to ramping up their spending towards the end of 2020 and going on the PR offensive - Read the full article

5. Thrift Saturation Point? 👗 Urban Outfitters announced their latest move, second hand shopping through their own upcoming marketplace Nully Thrift. FYI the second-hand market is estimated to be worth $36b p/a. With the likes of Depop selling to Etsy for over $1b there is huge demand to buy second hand (for the environmentally conscious) and to sell (all those with the dream of a side hustle). The kicker with Urban’s approach is being able to buy clothing from anywhere + their own brands like Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie and rent clothes (including vintage) in a monthly subscription model. Large investments into a saturated market is all the rage atm - Read the full article

6. How Memberships, Gated Content & Subscriptions Are Shaping Media 🗞 The world of media has changed significantly over the last decade, from advertising to gated content, to evolving to a subscription model. We also witnessed large turnover and a decent number of journalists that move into newsletters and going independent, we saw small shifts from publications to personalities. Here is a breakdown of the different models and how they have worked from crowdfunding to hard gated content - Read the full article 

7. Proximity To Humans Created Tamer Animals 🐕 Did you know? That just being in the proximity of humans we have shaped animals, making some tamer and that’s not just pets like dogs and cats. A fascinating article on how we have reshaped foxes ears, changes mouse and created new breeds of animals - Read the full article

8. The Secret Lives of Mosquitoes 🦟 Here is a fascinating article on the importance of the most hated insect in the world, and how they are incredibly important to humans - Read the full article 

9. The Future Of Characters Based On Social Journeys? 👀 The future of media is being played out in front of us but very differently than waiting for the next big blockbuster movie or tv show on streaming service. Qai Qai is the birth child of Serena Williams & her husband and Qai Qai (‘Kway Kway’) is being birthed on social media and developing one update at a time - Read the full article 

10. The Clickbaitification of Netflix 😞 As a former Growth lead, you see Netflix used as the premier example of great testing. Why? You need to test a huge number of things and a huge number of times to find that one or two small tweaks that will positively move the needle for your business. Very few have the scale Netflix does. The famous Netflix title image/card test used to positively move the needle in your feed in watching more content and helping you cut through choice paradox, unfortunately, it appears this tactic might have been ramped up and now creating clickbait-style cards and reducing the quality of content to watch. The way you could think about this is Netflix views are counted pretty quickly and this might be a test that is proving high watch time/rate or it is shaping the 100s of images provided by the owners of the content to actually gain views. In the saturated streaming space, quality of catalogue, quality of experience and recommendations will win out over new competitors. - Read the full article 

Quick OnlyFans Devil’s Advocate: AKA Smart PR & Marketing The whole subscription and creator space was locked into the OF reversal this week. The whole situation could have been a smart press (PR) play and a Marketing stunt to seed ‘on background’ about funding and potentially removing specific content types and test the waters with their blog post and tweet…Their process could have been - See the hype and the controversy caused by the blog and tweet - Leverage the insights and backlash - See who gets into contact with lucrative offerings (or services)- And then bait and switch to the reversal - Force the payment providers to cave and accept over £3b in transactions from OFThis approach might be worth considering the next time a whole industry is up in arms and surprised when the dominant market leader makes a loose statement without any real substance. FWIW their pivot away from ‘adult; is going to continue.

Need a pick me up?

"Quote Of The Week”  

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” — James Clear

Thanks for reading again this week Must Readers, go & have a great weekend! 

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